University of Newcastle researchers are working on making it a reality, and at the same time reduce our abortion rate.

One in every five pregnancies in Australia is terminated, around 80,000 a year, and the researchers say this demonstrates the failure of our current outdated contraceptives.

The university's Professor John Aitken says while the rest of the medical world has advanced in leaps and bounds in the past 50 years, contraception has remained unchanged.

"The amazing thing is we've had no new forms of contraception since the Pill was introduced in 1959, 1960," he says.

"And even that was based on the biochemistry of the 1930s.

"Here is something that touches on all our lives and it's remained totally undeveloped."

Professor Aitken says women aged under 19 and over 40 are the biggest groups having abortions in Australia, while younger women are also most at risk of contracting STDs.

And he says it's ironic that so many pregnancies are terminated in this country, while we also have a very high rate of assisted conception with IVF.

The aim of this revolutionary new contraceptive is to combine protection against pregnancy with protection against STDs, and the research team has developed the chemical principles to achieve that aim.

"And what it enables you to do, is both simultaneously paralyse the movement of lots of spermatazoa, and at the same time attacks any pathogenic microbe that's present in the immediate vicinity and stops the transmission of sexually transmitted disease," Professor Aitken explains.

"We can show that this works in the test tube.

"We're currently trying to make sure that the product itself is absolutely safe, will have no side-effects associated with it.

"Once we've got over that hurdle then we move into Phase One clinical trials."

The funding for the research has come from Bill and Melinda Gates, as the professor says big pharmaceutical companies have completely pulled out of contraceptive research because they are already making so much money from existing methods.

Newcastle has become a centre for reproductive research, with the biggest single aggregation of scientists in the country working in this area.

The new contraceptive may eventually take the form of a sponge or vaginal ring, to be inserted two to three days before sexual intercourse, and would be activated on contact with semen.

It could be revolutionary not just for Australian couples, but worldwide.

"At the very minimum there are about 46 million abortions every year, and that's telling you something very profound about the failure of our current contraceptive methods," the professor says.

You can hear 1233 ABC Newcastle's Jill Emberson's interview with Professor Aitken by playing the attached audio.